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@new2cruise Here is link to a comment in which I linked to both my reviews. This comment also has some additional thoughts (sorry if that’s confusing).

We did this cruise last year. We are not big drinkers, so we didn’t do any wine tours, although I know the area around Napier is generally considered the best wine-producing region in New Zealand. As for other tours, we were disappointed in the three included we took (Sydney, Melbourne, and Dunedin), so much so that we cancelled the rest. Sydney was the worst. Our primary complaint was they were all “panoramic” bus tours which is not our style at all. However, this was partially my fault as they’re listed as such; but it was our first VO cruise after a wonderful river cruise so I thought the included tours would be more similar. But the Viking optional excursions were excellent and more active. I did a write up here on CC back in March 2023 of our excursions. I would also encourage a trip to Hobbiton. I am not a Lord of the Rings fan (although my husband is) and I found it well-organized, beautiful, and charming. Hobbiton is closer to Rotorua than Auckland. However, if you have a week to kill in Auckland and you have other sights to see in Rotorua, it might be worth the extra drive.

There were hot chocolate packets in the world cafe on our cruise on Mars in March 2023. They were with the tea bags/coffee machine, so you could get hot water there. There were both ceramic mugs and disposable cups with lids.

You can also search this particular forum (upper right of your screen in landscape mode). I posted my reviews about a year ago and I’ve seen others.

Hubby and I enjoyed watching the industrial ports for a while, too, before or after our day out (there are several on this cruise). It’s fascinating and humbling to see how much stuff is moved around the world, for better or worse. In Auckland (not an industrial port per se), a commercial container-size ship was docked next to us but it was full of only cars. We watched in morning and evening and even the next morning as they moved all the cars off the ship and onto car trailers. Thousands and thousands of brand new cars! Mind-blowing for a small country. But I personally wouldn’t want that to be my only view for an entire day. Also, on Christmas, I doubt the port is operational.

We did this cruise earlier this year, so here are my thoughts, which are just opinions, of course. First of all, I’m truly sorry that your itinerary has changed without a readily apparent reason. It’s very disappointing when you’ve paid that much money and will be spending so much time to get to a place you may never visit again. At least a last minute change due to weather (as happened to us and the after effects of Cyclone Gabrielle) is understandable. Re: Auckland. Honestly, we found Auckland the least interesting port on this entire cruise. The city itself is a basic large nondescript city. We had booked a private tour to Piha beach but it was canceled three days prior due to mud slides from the cyclone, so we did the HOHO bus at the last minute. Even the “top” sights as included on that were not interesting to us. We also have friends who live in New Zealand (we met up with them earlier on this cruise), and they warned us Auckland was only good for major shopping. However, having said all that, there is a large sailboating community in Auckland, so I imagine if that’s your thing, you could probably find something fun to do. On the positive side, if you’re disembarking in Auckland with a Viking transfer, you will likely have several hours that day to do something in the city. New Zealand required an empty ship by a certain time early in the morning (9:00?), so Viking took us all to hotel downtown and we had 4-5 hours to explore before we had to return for our bus to the airport. As others have said, you could use your day in Tauranga to travel to Auckland, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There is so much more to see in Tauranga; we weren’t even able to see everything we wanted on our day there. Plus it is several hours of driving each way. Again, that’s just my opinion. If Auckland is essential to you, I feel booking a day or two on your own is the best option. Re: Dunedin on Christmas. The ship doesn’t actually dock at Dunedin, which was about a 30 minutes shuttle bus ride away. The dock here is a very small town and the port is an industrial port that required a bus to even leave the port area. In addition, the port is in a narrow (but beautiful) harbor that requires a pilot boat to travel through a very narrow dredged lane (we saw the dredger and learned about it on our excursion). I would imagine that since it will be Christmas, Viking may not be able to obtain a pilot for the boat and/or drivers for the shuttle buses. The port itself may be closed for the holiday. Even if you docked, this is not a port in which you may walk off the ship by yourself. In my opinion, a relaxing coastal day at sea would be the better option in this case. You’ll actually see more beautiful scenery than the containers and industrial cranes, etc, at the dock. I wish you both a lovely time on your cruises, whatever you decide about these ports.

My husband and I are in our forties and we’re definitely in the minority on our cruise. We saw one other couple that might have our age. Everyone else was definitely older. We’re quiet people who like to read on vacation, so it was perfect. And we knew that going in. Everyone we met was kind and, yes, usually spry. Yes, three separate times our age was commented on as a joke, so that’s a little grating, but we just smiled and rolled with it.

I would say the product pictures are very accurate, at least on my feet. I have no trouble wearing these with loafers and slip on sneakers. Ballet flats may be iffy; it would depend on the shoe I think. The silicone goes all the way around the edge, which allows one small amounts of “adjustments” by pushing it slightly down in one spot if needed. It's also helpful because they are truly nude on my skin, but of course that varies.

These sound like what you’re looking for. I love them so much I bought them twice! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QKY1S1D/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I wrote two posts, although the second one is more specifically about the excursions: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2922947-first-viking-ocean-cruise-review-was-it-worth-the-money/#comment-65000491 To be clear, we did have a good time and have booked another Viking cruise. However, my greatest wish would be far greater transparency in all excursion details. In retrospect, I should have studied anywhere I could for any details for these Viking excursions that I could before going, but even then the language is often vague. I made the mistake of just assuming the included tours would be more like our excellent river cruise which was almost entirely walking tours. For our upcoming cruise, I’m also going to research a “back up” do it ourself walking tour if needed in each port (with a lot of help from Rick Steves). As a ye little whipper snapper on a Viking cruise (age 44 now), my second wish would be the aforementioned more active walking tours as an included option. I appreciate the knowledge and history provided by a guide, so going 100% on our own all the time isn’t my ideal, either. My ideal port day would be a 2-3 hour walking tour in the morning that ends with a clear method for those who wish to return to the ship on their own (and I feel Viking *is* good at that) so that we can then see more on our own.

I don't know. I'm personally neutral on digital versus paper reviews. While saving paper is always a good idea, if I want to write something, I prefer to write it out long hand rather then try to type it on my phone (the only keyboard I have available on vacation). Perhaps a longer digital review sent to one's email after the cruise would be beneficial; it would give one time to reflect and more time to respond fully using the device/computer of their choice. Note these app reviews were only ranking-style without room for comment. I suspect I only received the follow up due to my very poor ranking. It would be interesting to know if a mediocre review would have triggered this (I don’t think so based on my Melbourne review). But surely Viking could have learned something, if they truly wanted to know, by asking me why I ranked it mediocre. However, I did like that the app was asking about a specific excursion, and not just all excursions in general.

On our Australia & New Zealand cruise earlier this year, I could and did review shore excursions using the Viking app, but it was a pretty simple “click the bubble 1-5” review. When I gave the first shore excursion a poor rating (Sydney panoramic included), I then received a paper form in my state room that asked me for more information. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Let me add my agreement with @uktog and @rbslos18. We've only done one Viking cruise so far, but the lectures were one of my favorite parts. I was so impressed with how all the lecturers on our cruise struck an excellent balance of making the topic easy to grasp if one perhaps knew nothing while also imparting a great deal of information beyond the basic level while ALSO keeping things lively and engaging. At least on our cruise, some were titled “an introduction to” and some were titled something like “a deeper look.” This might have been that particular lecturer's idea, though, as I only remember it for the history lectures. (There was a two-part Introduction to Australian History and then A Deeper Look at the Australian Penal System as I recall, although those exact titles may be wrong.)

I was very impressed with the lectures on our Australia and New Zealand cruise, although I wouldn’t say they were college level (maybe high school). However, they were lively speakers and I always learned something, especially as this area of history was not one I knew a great deal about. We had 3 lecturers: history, wildlife, and art. They all gave at least one lecture a day and on sea days there were more. There were so many lectures we couldn't watch them all unless we wanted to spend all day doing it. The wildlife lecturer also led a gathering at sunrise every morning on deck for spotting and photography, although we never attended. We watched them all on demand in the TV in our stateroom, usually after dinner; we never did any live. There were also lectures on demand on topics not related to our cruise, such as a weapons of the Vikings or something like that my husband watched. My husband also did the Bayeux Tapestry tour on board; I’m not sure who led that. The only disappointment we had was a star-gazing event, which turned out to just be a single telescope set up on deck but no leader/lecturer.

There was always a short line at 5:55 on the Mars during our AZ & NZ in February. Back to the small “Viking” exhibit. As others said, it moved very quickly when the restaurant opened. As a plus: DH and I took turns getting out of line to read the exhibit placards/look at the artifacts, so we saw the whole thing by the end of the cruise.